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That's a good thing. The market is very good at empirically validating research. It helps filter out the chaff and ensure research is useful. Better than academ

by melony 5y ago

That's a good thing. The market is very good at empirically validating research. It helps filter out the chaff and ensure research is useful. Better than academia wasting years on concepts like the "semantic web" where nobody can even agree on what it means. Academia is under attack from many political directions right now, being able to show useful output will help it thrive in the long run.

manquer 5y ago
Research takes time, launching something prematurely which is clearly not ready for practical application will sooner or later fail and suck out any further funding out the field. The goal of academic research is to further knowledge, as long as knowledge is produced even if is only that an approach will not work then they are not wasting anything. It is not job of academic research to monetize or even do work that can be potentially monetized. That what corporate research is for. If academia focused on monetization they wouldn't need to teach or depend on public funding to keen afloat. That is simply not their goal. Most academic scholars have a teaching day job and are more than fullfilling a useful role in society with just that . anything further is gravy
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
KittenInABox 5y ago
> The market is very good at empirically validating research. It helps filter out the chaff and ensure research is useful. I am very skeptical and would like to see studies that evidence this. Counterfactually, the market would never tolerate the decades of research behind MRNA vaccines and the researchers behind it were considered useless. The market has also put in mind-blowing amounts of money towards the ameloid hypothesis behind alzheimers to massive disappointment.
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  I agree with you. I don't think the market is good at validating any ideas or research. Salespeople will talk up their product to no end and over promise. The only thing the market validates is the ability of people to sell crap Being able to sell something doesn't necessarily mean that thing is good or correct in any way
nfgrep 5y ago
I can understand your reason for saying this, (useful things often sell well) but a market only validates that people are willing to pay for something, not that it is ‘valid’ empirically.
- sam0x17 5y ago
  Right. By that same token, directly selling fentanyl or oxy to consumers without any regulations would surely sell well, as does nicotine, etc., but this doesn't mean it's good for society.
nobodyandproud 5y ago
> The market is very good at empirically validating research. The market can do this, if it’s correctly incentivized to do so. More often than not, the incentives just aren’t there or are compelling enough. Often it’s other businesses that put up such disincentives.
numpad0 5y ago
The problem with the market is it wants consistent, short-term successive, quantifiable production, and that seems to instantly kill all progress in a field of research. They just go laid back watching investments burn and prints worse and worse nonsense.
sam0x17 5y ago
Capital is far too short-sighted to look beyond this year or this quarter. Many of the important groundbreaking ideas or projects take years, even decades to formulate. As I've said elsewhere, capital will just take the easiest road it is allowed to take, which currently is stifling innovation, buying competitors, maintaining monopolies, relying on economies of scale to shut out competitors when they can't be acquired, and using lobbyists to ensure regulations that affect the status quo never pass. In the past the big tech corporations maintained huge corporate labs and actually did groundbreaking research with 15+ year projects. Now everything is short term. We can't even compel capital to see the long term value of preventing climate change, when Exon was aware this was going to happen as far back as the 1970s in excruciating detail. No, capital will innovate only if there are sufficient regulations in place, incentives, and guardrails, that there is no other choice than for them other than to innovate (which they will do begrudgingly). Capital is by no means a vehicle for innovation. When was the last time you saw innovation from Google in the search space, their bread and butter?
- beepbooptheory 5y ago
  This is a really great way to frame it, because it really does seem to be about time/speed. I don't think we can even collectively comprehend great innovations that need many resources and time anymore, who has even the time to work on it? People need to have jobs after all.
- simplestats 5y ago
  I cant think of the last time I saw the word "corporations" used in a post that wasn't part of an attack on them as inferior/evil/villanous etc. Speaking of NLP, your post would be very easy to classify sentiment of using a simple keyword approach. Anyway, I've worked both in academia and industry. Industry is simply more practical and better at technology. In tech areas, academia desperately needs industry to provide the feedback they provide. Especially in AI areas. You are thinking of CEO's or salespeople or something, but the people that matter here are the engineers. And I'd place their assessment over that of grad students any day. If the engineers can't make it work, then yes there's a problem here. Doesn't always mean it can't work, but for most ideas it probably does. By the way industry research labs certainly still exist. But long-term self-funded research has to compete with govt funding of research. Why throw your investor money at a high-risk idea when Stanford, MIT, and 100 other R1's are throwing taxpayer money at it? Otherwise industry labs end up just competing for govt gants ultimately. Meanwhile nowadays we see academia chasing short-term problems that industry leads in (and trying to patent them too).
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"The market is very good at empirically validating research." That's why the market for homeopathy and fake medicine is worth $30,000,000,000, right?

by melony 5y ago

manquer 5y ago

Research takes time, launching something prematurely which is clearly not ready for practical application will sooner or later fail and suck out any further funding out the field. The goal of academic research is to further knowledge, as long as knowledge is produced even if is only that an approach will not work then they are not wasting anything. It is not job of academic research to monetize or even do work that can be potentially monetized. That what corporate research is for. If academia focused on monetization they wouldn't need to teach or depend on public funding to keen afloat. That is simply not their goal. Most academic scholars have a teaching day job and are more than fullfilling a useful role in society with just that . anything further is gravy

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

KittenInABox 5y ago

> The market is very good at empirically validating research. It helps filter out the chaff and ensure research is useful. I am very skeptical and would like to see studies that evidence this. Counterfactually, the market would never tolerate the decades of research behind MRNA vaccines and the researchers behind it were considered useless. The market has also put in mind-blowing amounts of money towards the ameloid hypothesis behind alzheimers to massive disappointment.

netizen-936824 5y ago
I agree with you. I don't think the market is good at validating any ideas or research. Salespeople will talk up their product to no end and over promise. The only thing the market validates is the ability of people to sell crap Being able to sell something doesn't necessarily mean that thing is good or correct in any way

nfgrep 5y ago

I can understand your reason for saying this, (useful things often sell well) but a market only validates that people are willing to pay for something, not that it is ‘valid’ empirically.

sam0x17 5y ago
Right. By that same token, directly selling fentanyl or oxy to consumers without any regulations would surely sell well, as does nicotine, etc., but this doesn't mean it's good for society.

nobodyandproud 5y ago

> The market is very good at empirically validating research. The market can do this, if it’s correctly incentivized to do so. More often than not, the incentives just aren’t there or are compelling enough. Often it’s other businesses that put up such disincentives.

numpad0 5y ago

The problem with the market is it wants consistent, short-term successive, quantifiable production, and that seems to instantly kill all progress in a field of research. They just go laid back watching investments burn and prints worse and worse nonsense.

sam0x17 5y ago

Capital is far too short-sighted to look beyond this year or this quarter. Many of the important groundbreaking ideas or projects take years, even decades to formulate. As I've said elsewhere, capital will just take the easiest road it is allowed to take, which currently is stifling innovation, buying competitors, maintaining monopolies, relying on economies of scale to shut out competitors when they can't be acquired, and using lobbyists to ensure regulations that affect the status quo never pass. In the past the big tech corporations maintained huge corporate labs and actually did groundbreaking research with 15+ year projects. Now everything is short term. We can't even compel capital to see the long term value of preventing climate change, when Exon was aware this was going to happen as far back as the 1970s in excruciating detail. No, capital will innovate only if there are sufficient regulations in place, incentives, and guardrails, that there is no other choice than for them other than to innovate (which they will do begrudgingly). Capital is by no means a vehicle for innovation. When was the last time you saw innovation from Google in the search space, their bread and butter?

beepbooptheory 5y ago
This is a really great way to frame it, because it really does seem to be about time/speed. I don't think we can even collectively comprehend great innovations that need many resources and time anymore, who has even the time to work on it? People need to have jobs after all.
simplestats 5y ago
I cant think of the last time I saw the word "corporations" used in a post that wasn't part of an attack on them as inferior/evil/villanous etc. Speaking of NLP, your post would be very easy to classify sentiment of using a simple keyword approach. Anyway, I've worked both in academia and industry. Industry is simply more practical and better at technology. In tech areas, academia desperately needs industry to provide the feedback they provide. Especially in AI areas. You are thinking of CEO's or salespeople or something, but the people that matter here are the engineers. And I'd place their assessment over that of grad students any day. If the engineers can't make it work, then yes there's a problem here. Doesn't always mean it can't work, but for most ideas it probably does. By the way industry research labs certainly still exist. But long-term self-funded research has to compete with govt funding of research. Why throw your investor money at a high-risk idea when Stanford, MIT, and 100 other R1's are throwing taxpayer money at it? Otherwise industry labs end up just competing for govt gants ultimately. Meanwhile nowadays we see academia chasing short-term problems that industry leads in (and trying to patent them too).

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

"The market is very good at empirically validating research." That's why the market for homeopathy and fake medicine is worth $30,000,000,000, right?